[development] Very concerned over Drupal's core development

[Karoly Negyesi]

On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 10:06 AM, Peter Wolanin <pwolanin at gmail.com> wrote:
> I would strongly agree with chx and others that in some way we need
> additional committers.

You can't agree with me because I have not said so. Check the thread
again :) I have not suggested anything and will not (for some time at
least). I deliberately avoid taking sides and rather play devil's
advocate. Do not presume I agree or disagree with any idea presented
in here.

The rest of this mail will be reflections on many of the things were
raised in here.

It really must be noted that the Drupal 6 cycle was unusual because
major contribs decided they do not want to maintain old crap and did a
complete refactoring and started that only once D6 was out the door.
This, hopefully, won't repeat so in the future contribs will be ready
somewhat sooner. This does not help the contrib-core gap, of course.

One of the reasons I left contrib is that my perfectionist half could
not stand the crappy code my programmer half produced. I can't write
pretty code without peer review. If you think you can, my best advice
is to think again. Really, peer review is almost mandatory. Simply
allowing people to commit patches will not help our code quality.
Really, check most contrib vs core. I started with a post which showed
how a shortage of patch writers, reviewers and committers create a
self strenghening cycle. Making a half-assed fix at committers is not
enough to fix the whole cycle.

Slimming down core is an idea but as was noted we do we need them to
validate. Also, if you slim down core and thus speed up development,
how again will that help the contrib-core gap?

Now, Drupal shops. Sure, you can't sell to a client directly core
development but what about this, say, you would ask for 100/hr on a
project which takes 400 hrs (less hree man-months, not that much). If
you ask 110/hr instead then that client sponsored 40 hrs of core work,
too. On the other hand if you can get away with 110/hr then why not
just bill that and go to the beach?